Being a Socially Responsible Business

Being socially responsible as a business has always been a goal and an important one. But this year, I have taken it on even more consciously. We are striving in a more dedicated way towards that goal. I interpret social responsibility as two fold — one is how we treat people — pay fair wages, fair exchange for services, work with other socially responsible companies and secondly — is an environmental focus — how we operate and how that impacts the earth. We are taking actions in both of these areas and like most values and goals — we are striving but aren’t perfect (yet)!

Some of things that we are doing:

Building a list of resources here on the website for you
Working towards Green Business Certification with Green America
Reducing paper usage (I love printing reports out so this is BIG)
Contributing to organizations that support women in business
Talking about social responsibility
Moving our bank accounts to a Credit Union that invests in the local community and education and does NOT support investments in guns, big oil or other companies that are not within our guidelines.

What actions can you take that would improve your organizations operations and feel good for you and your team?

Being socially responsible can feel really good. When you increase your giving and outreach into the community it feels good.

There are many ways to achieve this.

–>>Create a volunteer day for your staff to help out in the community.
–>>Take on interns within your organization
–>>Give to organizations locally — food banks, homeless shelters, domestic violence shelters… whatever organization is a good fit for you and your company.
–>>Let your team know that you are giving and supporting the community.

You can also write a press release about your giving, but that shouldn’t be the WHY of the giving, just a side affect.

Involve your team in making giving decisions.

You could have team members submit ideas for organizations to support and pick one organization each month or each quarter that you support. Have them share WHY that organization is important to them. Include their WHY in your company newsletter.

Participate as a company in events — create a running team or cycling team or other team that can participate in events that raise money for a charity. Now you are achieving multiple things at the same time. You are accomplishing some fundraising and charity work, you are getting your team working together, and they are doing something that is healthy! It is a true win-win-win strategy.

However you decide to increase your company’s social responsibility – start today with one action and grow from there.

Of course, there are many, many ways to improve your operations and make them more earth friendly, sustainable and socially responsible.

So, what are the things that you are doing in your company? How do your values impact your operations? Do you feel that it is important or valuable to operate in socially responsible ways — why or why not??